Greater Louisville Project

21st-century cities leverage data to improve the quality of life of their residents. The GLP is making that possible in Louisville by releasing Competitive City Reports that catalyze change and mobilize key players from across sectors to focus on Louisville’s areas of highest potential impact. Not sure where to start? View our data index.

Pre Order you 2019 Competitive City Report Today!

The Greater Louisville Project will issue its 2019 Competitive City Update: The Flow of Community Investment, on June 8. The report takes a comprehensive look at how the public, private and government sectors invest in our community. Order your hard copies today. Shipping will begin in mid June. Reports will also be available for digital download in pdf format on June 8.

Quality of Place

Jobs

How Competitive is Louisville?

The GLP has identified four Deep Drivers of Change: Education, Jobs, Health, and Quality of Place. The Deep Drivers of Change point to a few big but attainable goals that can inform our civic agenda by highlighting both the possibilities and the challenges facing Louisville.

Education

Jobs

Health

Quality of Place

We Measure & Connect

The Greater Louisville Project benchmarks Louisville’s performance against its peer cities, keeping us focused on a shared agenda for long-term progress. These “peers” are cities that share common indicators, embody similar socio-economic characteristics, and provide data points that make comparison of the factors influencing the Deep Drivers of Change possible.

How we perform against peers in addressing strategic challenges allows community leaders to set actionable goals that drive improvement, position our city for long-term progress, and help us all build a greater Louisville.

Our Data Legacy

The GLP publishes data, research, and information related to our Deep Drivers through its Competitive City Reports. These reports help connect the dots between education, jobs, health, and quality of place.

2018: 15 Years Beyond Merger

2018

2017: Poverty Beyond Income

2017

2015: A Focus on Poverty

2015

2014: Peer Cites Update

2014

2013: Building a Healthier Louisville

2013

2013: STEM Report

2013

2012 Competitive City Update

2012

2011 Competitive City Report

2011

2010 Competitive City Report

2010

Digging Deeper: Education Attainment, Louisville Metro

Digging Deeper: Education Attainment, Louisville Metro

2009 Competitive City Report

2009

Jefferson County Education Pipeline

Jefferson County Education Pipeline

2008 Competitive City Update

2008

2007 Competitive City Report

2007

2005 Competitive City Report

2005

Beyond Merger

Beyond Merger

Congratulations #classof2020! You did it! As we wait for this year's #graduationrate, tell us, "What can we do as… https://t.co/zPb2MHRhnF

#DisconnectedYouth often aren't able to build employment skills or have adequate social capital to fall back on in… https://t.co/4I44thJfHP

“To those in uniform serving today and to those who have served in the past, we honor you today and every day.”- Un… https://t.co/BlZ3lO373g

Blog & News

May 28, 2020

2019 Competitive City Update: The Flow of Community Investment

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March 9, 2020

Supporting a Competitive City: The 2020 Census

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January 6, 2020

Quality of Life in Louisville for People with Chronic Illnesses

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November 25, 2019

Louisville’s Cost-Burdened Households

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Natural Breaks Algorithm

For each indicator, Greater Louisville Project assigns cities into one of three groups (high-performing, middle-of-the-pack, and low-performing) based on how they compare to other cities. The assignment is based on how cities naturally cluster on that indicator. Sometimes, the differences between cities are very small, and the difference between a city ranked 5th and 6th could simply be a matter of the sampling error that arises from using survey data. Thus, rather than always make a division that declares the top 5 to be the top tier, we use a natural breaks algorithm to look for a cluster of cities that is outperforming the rest, a cluster that is about average, and a cluster that is lagging. This clustering gives us a better indication of where Louisville is thriving and where Louisville has room to learn from cities that are doing better.

Z-Scores

Z-scores (or standardization) is a way to combine data with different units of measurement into a single index. The z-score is a measure of how far away a city (or census tract, etc.) is from the average city. In order to be comparable across different units of measurement, the z-score is the distance from the mean measured in standard deviations (e.g. if Louisville has a z-score of 1 it means Louisville is 1 standard deviation above the mean of its peer cities).

Data from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation's County Health Rankings use z-scores and all z-scores are relative to the mean of Louisville's peer cities. (On the County Health Rankings site z-scores are relative to all the counties in each state - thus z-scores reported by GLP will be different, because we are using a different reference group). The Greater Louisville Project also uses z-scores in our multidimensional poverty index, which compares each census tract to the mean of all census tracts in Louisville.